Finding love, empathy and compassion in Kabir’s songs

My strongest memories connect me to food and music, both of which connect me even more deeply to Bua. Macabre is the stage for my earliest memory of this world, but the script, the set, the actors and the music have me seeing only light when I journey back to that moment in 1977. I was five years old when my paternal grandfather died of a heart attack in Agra, where he was visiting the holy shrine of the Radha Soami faith in Soami Bagh. Bade Papaji found death at the feet of his guru, a sublime ending that finds place in lore and legend.

The ambulance, the transporting of his remains to Delhi, the funeral and collecting of the ashes, his phool – these are iffy memories; maybe they only exist because others have marked them into my being. The 24×7 singing of devotional songs and the food which brought everyone together, giving all a moment or two of calm – these are the rich memories that have taught me that the darkest of storms come with slivers of hope and light for the future.

Bua’s singing of Kabir’s dohas and poetry as Bani during those days stamped onto my young mind a rich tapestry of simple words and noble thoughts. When she sang “Maati Kahe Kumhaar Se, Tu Kyaa Rondhe Mohe, Ek Din Aisaa Aaayegaa, Main Rondhungi Tohe”, I was transfixed, as always, to her soothing rich voice, its range and depth, and to the imagery and layered sophistry of the messaging Kabir gifted us about life and death, about living and loving. That doha, with which Bua began the Bani, taught me from age five about the guarantee of death and framed my mind around a world where all life is sacred and equal.

Kabir’s words and Bua’s singing taught me the futility of our egos wanting control of our lives and its outcomes, and the uselessness of our machinations and orchestrations. We waste time shaping and moulding things to become what we think they should be when, in the end, once taken away from this world, we go back to the earth and the creator made into the divine potter by Kabir kneads us, shapes us, and puts us back in our place. A place which we cannot see, cannot imagine, cannot give words to, but visit only when we live connected to all lives animate and inanimate in this world and see the creator with the wise blessing of deep devotion as One.

My early years in Manhattan, where I arrived at the age of 20 and lived for almost three decades, gave me countless moments daily when from Bua’s songs and Kabir’s teachings I would cull hope in despair and forgiveness for hate thrown my way. America, the oldest and richest democracy, has always been the living and breathing face of the fractured reality of our lives and the world we inhabit. Perfection in the form of a democratic nation is a chimaera that is best not given more oxygen than it gets from xenophobic, flag-bearing jingoists.

Having been the inconvenient other everywhere I have made home, I see and feel clearly the hate and disdain that majorities have for minorities, whether based on religion, sex or gender. When I encountered hatred, when I saw bullying and misogyny, when I was frustrated by laws that took away from the have-nots even more than they had already been denied – it was Kabir’s poetry and Bua’s soulful singing of it that gave me words to comfort my fellow US citizens and residents, to heal my own soul, and to help me rise above the hate disguised as nationalism, religion or normalcy.

Kabir found both Muslims and Hindus calling him their own after his passing. His words have been immortalised by their finding prime real estate in “The Book of the Sikhs”, and my Deepa Bua has found her place not only in the DNA her three kids and theirs share with my siblings and me, but in the memories of the hauntingly beautiful rich poems she sang and filled our hearts, minds and souls with from a young age. Bua’s life, like all human life, was mortal, but her singing and her empathetic humanity which mirrored the wise words of Kabir, live immortally in all of us. She taught all who knew her to celebrate daily, especially when dark clouds of confusion confound and when the searing heat makes one feel all is lost.

Now back home in India, close to Varanasi where Kabir was born, and living in Delhi in the home where my Bua joined my Papa for all our holidays and special celebrations, I hold Kabir and Bua close to my heart. The two together give me words of inspiration, songs of healing, wisdom that provide for all and especially those most marginalised and poetry steeped in nostalgia and the common sense that is richly celebrated in the Guru Granth Sahib, the sacred book of the Sikhs. The utterances of Kabir that Bua sang bring to my mind a vividly colourful painting of India where every citizen is equal, no matter their religion, gender, caste or class, where humanity is valued over division, and where love, empathy and compassion is the language of connection between all beings. In the tunes she left me with, Bua has gifted me the strength to bear the heat of June and see hope and a future beyond, where life will give back aplenty.